Recurse Center Day 3

I arrived late and stayed late. I missed Check-Ins & the Sublime Workshop … I was really disappointed about both of those

I went to two workshops today: Algorithms & Design Patterns

I found the Algorithms one useful, but like previous days, was in over my head. However, it made me aware of the Coursera Course & just put the idea in my head to look up and begin learning different algorithms. I think if I combine learning algorithms with doing more and more basic programming exercises, my skills will start to improve a lot.

One of my Batchmates asked me to Pair Program tomorrow. She’s working on a 2048 clone and wants to move it from the console to Pygame. This gave me a place to focus my energies to (which I’ve sorely needed). As I’m trying to code the game on my own, it’s pretty clear that I’m in over my head. Also, it’s a little affirming to know that my ability to read and understand other peoples’ code has improved just by virtue of the fact that my background knowledge has increased.

Otherwise, I discovered the Python Help Files, which should make for some good reading, and I got a bit further with the Python Cookbook. I’ve decided I’m going to start using it more as a cookbook & less as a textbook. This will help me fend off boredom. Although, when I’m on the train, it’s totally appropriate to treat it as a textbook. But when I’m at Hacker School, it’s a better idea to be project-oriented about it. I also bought a copy of “Writing Idiomatic Python” by Jeff Knupp

Some other cool things I discovered:
Pygcurse – a library that works on top of Pygame … it looks hella useful
Kivy – a GUI library for Python – Apparently 2048 was written in this?

In retrospect, I really wish I had gone to the programming Jargon workshop … maybe I can find a good list online

So far for me, the biggest challenge of The Recurse Center is that “There’s more to see than can ever be seen, more to do than can ever be done”